Question

Case 1: A woman is harassed by a top-level senior executive in a large company. She sues the company, and during settlement discussions she is offered an extremely large monetary settlement. In the agreement, the woman is required to confirm that the executive did nothing wrong, and after the agreement is signed the woman is prohibited from discussing anything about the incident publicly. Before the date scheduled to sign the settlement agreement, the woman's lawyer mentions that she has heard the executive has done this before, and the settlement amount is very large because the company probably had a legal obligation to dismiss the executive previously. The company however wants to keep the executive because he is a big money maker for the company.

Questions of case 1:

a. is the ethical dilemma here? What options does the woman have, and what should she do and why?

b. What are the ethical conflicts (discussed in ch 2) appearing in this case?

Answer 1

a) Ethical dilemma refers to a circumstance where a troublesome decision must be made between two approaches, both of which involves violating an ethical standard. Yes, ethical dilemma is present in the situation mentioned. The woman has two options - either to fight legal battle against executive or settle everything by taking monetary settlement. I believe , one should opt for former option because as mentioned in the study - this was not the first time executive did something like this. Therefore, fighting a legal battle would ensure executive being punished for his wrong deeds as well as safeguarding other female co-workers from going through all that the lady went through.

b) There are basically 5 major ethical conflicts, such as -

1) The Untrustworthy Knight: Incomplete Information

2) The Undead Workforce: Do the Ends Justify the Means?

3) Truth or Happiness: Choosing Between Two Goods (or Two Bads)

4) Mechanical Advantages vs Fictional Rewards

5) The Caged Demon: Open-Ended Problem

In this particular case study, the major ethical conflicts were - The Undead Workforce: Do the Ends Justify the Means, Truth or Happiness: Choosing Between Two Goods (or Two Bads and Mechanical Advantages vs Fictional Rewards.